26 May 2015

Recently I learned something that astounded me: a clothesline (for hanging washing out to dry) is a sign of poverty in the United States. Clotheslines are really things of the past, they said.

I was told this by some new neighbours who are from San Francisco. Having lived here for a year already, they realised that all New Zealanders have clotheslines, so could tell me this without feeling as though they were insulting me. For they must have noticed me hanging out our clothes... like a downtrodden wife stooping under the burden of poverty, according to their social conditioning.

For the record, we have three clothes-drying options: a backyard rotary clothesline, lines under the carport, and a drying rack that can be moved around to catch the warmest, sunniest spot.

My first, unchecked reaction (which went on inside me silently and invisibly, I hope) was "How lazy and irresponsible, how can you defend using clothes dryers all the time that run on electricity that is probably generated by burning fossil fuels, what wasteful destruction of our planet... rant, rant."

(I should emphasise that they were not saying they used clothes dryers in winter when it was too wet and cold to get the washing dry. They don't even have lines to hang it on, summer or winter.)

Then I realised that this was another of those rare opportunities that has come to me recently. I was given a glimpse of standard western culture as it truly, crazily is. Mostly we live inside it, so we can't see it.

To me, in many ways New Zealand has a very American, energy-hungry, consumerist, uber-comfortable way of life*. What we don't have is their cheap energy: I gather that at about 35 cents per kilowatt hour, our electricity is roughly 4 times more expensive than theirs, and our gas prices are also about four times higher. So most of us haven't slid into the central-heating, year-round clothes dryer, leave-lights-on mode. We're precluded from that aspect of Western culture by the shock of our $300 power bills.

So what would a non-Westerner, or a Westerner from long ago, be astounded at me for doing? Here are some I've figured out so far:

not having aged parents living with me

forcing my babies to sleep in a cot in a separate room to me

buying cheap Chinese-made clothes for my children (sometimes)

driving a car too often

habitually sitting in a chair and therefore failing to squat, so that like most Westerners I can't go to the toilet in the bush without danger of toppling over. This seems like a minor inconvenience until you think of the resulting tight achilles, hamstrings and lower backs that have lead to an epidemic of biomechanical problems (e.g. bad backs).

wearing shoes that are so stylishly narrow in front that my big toes deform to point inwards, creating bunions and much money for podatrists and supportive granny-shoe makers (actually mine don't but I see it everywhere, it's rife)

eating meat most days (I was abandoning this practice until my son developed a belly problem that means he can't eat beans and lentils, aaaghh!)

staring at an engaging screen instead of enjoying my friends and family, or perhaps an extra hour of sleep

Having a reasonably big fridge (not a double-door job, but adequate for four people). When I lived in the UK I was constantly irritated by their tiny waist-high fridges. The only freezer space was a little ice box at the top that could take maybe one large packet of frozen peas. It seemed like an impossibly antiquated way to live... which is probably how hanging out clothes seems to the Americans! (Actually I struggled to find places to dry clothes outside in the UK too.)

So I keep asking myself what other health, soul and planet-wrecking practices do I engage in that I can't see because everyone else is doing it too?

Today Anna made a quill and did her homework with it.
The ink is food colouring.

*Does this sound anti-American? I don't mean it to be. The people from the United States that I have met, in the US itself, in the UK and in NZ, have been polite, charming, eloquent, and smart. That includes my neighbours.

11 May 2015

I've had the great pleasure recently of writing an article about bumblebee research that's going on in New Zealand. I stumbled upon the topic purely by meeting a new family to the neighbourhood - the dad is the chief scientist and a very smart, pleasant and interesting man. The mum's a lovely new friend to me, and their daughter to my daughter. It's been a happy turn of events.

So even as we march through autumn, I've been thinking a lot about those big furry bees. Did you know they're mostly dead now? There might be the odd one around, but they die out in autumn and just the new queens from the summer's nest survive. The question is: how to get more of them around next summer?

Why bumblebees are useful

Oh, firstly you might want to know WHY you want more of them around! Many people love them just for being bumblebees, of course, but also they are supremely useful pollinators in the garden. If you want to grow fruit and vegetables, you need pollinators. (But not for tomatoes, capsicums and cucumbers - and maybe a few other things - because these plants, I've learnt, are self-pollinating as long as there's a bit of breeze about.)

Look at all that yellow on its fur: can you see why bumblebees aregood pollinators?

The varroa mite has wiped out wild honeybees, so unless you have beehives near you, or are even a beekeeper yourself (an admirable occupation), bumblebees are the bee's knees for you.

Plus they rarely sting, which is a big deal for people like my daughter and me who blow up in pain and itchiness when we get stung. Although when they do sting, they can keep on stinging in a wasp-like fashion.

How to get more bumblebees in your garden

I'm not an expert, but this is what I've learnt after speaking to a number of experts on this topic. There aren't many experts, because bumbles make only a little honey for themselves, needing no over-winter store like honeybees do. Humans have had no honey reward to force us to understand bumblebees very well.

Firstly, when the queens emerge in spring - early spring, for some species (we have four species in NZ) - they need FLOWERS. The queens have been hibernating all winter, and they'll die if they can't adequately refuel.

Think cottage-garden flowers and herbs, not purely NZ native plants, although they do go crazy feeding on some of them too. For the earliest spring flowers, I've got phacelia (also called tansy) and lupins, and our blueberry bushes. The great thing about phacelia and lupins is that once you've sown them, and let them flower and go to seed, you always have them popping up. The wonderful thing about blueberries is that - well, you get blueberries to eat.

Lupins flowering last September in my early spring garden.

A bumblebee queen I caught and put in a jar. She's drinking honey. I took her along to a research institute the next day, and they used her for their research,then let her go. She hated being in the jar and buzzed VERY loudly!

The other thing the queens need is somewhere to make a nest - usually a hole in a ground, or a bank. Very tidy gardens aren't ideal, BUT you can try to make them a little house if you insist on clearing away the messy corners and general piles of vegetative rubbish that they might nest in. A link with a guide on how to make them a house is here.

Despite cultivating (or not cultivating, as the case may be) messy corners myself, I will certainly be making a house like this in spring, and putting some house insulation inside it (here, you see, I have insider tips from scientists). The need a bit of fluff to nest in, and can't collect it themselves. It is said that they like old rodent holes, both for the hole and the fur left behind.

(But if you have read the story of Mrs Tittlemouse, you know that, don't you! Remember how Babbity Bumble tried to nest in Mrs Tittlemouse's hole? The moss she was gathering is another suitable nesting material, but more of a northern hemisphere bumblebee resource, I'm told. Beatrix Potter knew far more about bumblebees than me at the start of this year.)

Then they must be fed all summer! They can visit other gardens too, of course, so do not buckle under the pressure of keeping them alive yourself. After the queen has beefed up with nectar, and collected some pollen in readiness for her first eggs, the pressure comes off her a bit as her daughters (workers) do the collecting for her. Eventually a kind of crusty, messy nest develops, consisting of pile upon pile of loosely round, bulbous, waxy cells. At first the cells hold the babies, then they are recycled as honey pots. The workers collect nectar for themselves, pollen for the babies, and both for the queen. Provide some cottage garden flowers, and it will all happen effortlessly.

There is a list of suitable flowers here, but note it is a British guide and some things like privet become terrible weeds here. (So do foxgloves, but sshhh, I guiltily have some growing). I am told reliably that fancy double-petaled garden centre punnets can be quite unsuitable for bees. They have old-fashioned tastes.

By the way, get sowing now - how else will your phacelia and lupins be flowering by spring? They are so hardy that they can sprout in winter and resist frost, then flower madly in spring. There's no need to kneel down and make a little hole for each seed: just scatter the seeds freely. I am also about to sow some more poppies, although I don't have enough experience with them yet to know when they will flower. It's also a good time to poke some comfrey roots in the ground. Bumblebees love comfrey flowers, and the leaves are great for feeding compost heaps, making compost tea and feeding to chickens. It flowers quite a bit later - summer rather than spring - but keeps flowering for months and months. My comfrey patch has only just stopped flowering.

Oh, and borage. It reloads with nectar extremely fast so the bees can harvest it repeatedly within an hour. There, I must stop at that.

The chances of bumblebees using the bee house are quite slim, but if it works for me I will be thrilled and will definitely report it here, complete with photos.